A Dialogue between Jerome Sans and Qiu Zhijie

Jerome Sans: What is the story behind your UCCA project— Breaking Through the Ice ?

Qiu Zhijie: The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Project embodies a process of self-examination. It is a visit to a historical site as I muse over the past, contemplating the path of industrialization and reflecting on human destiny. The exhibition Breaking Through the Ice focuses on modernization and industrialization. As part of the larger Project, it is by far the most ambitious in its scale. I do not think in the future I will be able to present this project on such a scale again.

Jerome Sans: Is the project a reference to our current global financial crisis? We are living in an era where much of the world is metaphorically “under the ice”. What are the central references in the work?

Qiu Zhijie: The particular crisis that this piece references is not actually a recent one. In fact, it has been going on for two hundred years. This “layer of ice” is the result of “progress” through industrialization. We are all implicated in the “modernization” process that has created this unyielding layer of ice. Today, if we find the Western world under ice, the Socialist world is already somewhere on the ocean floor. Looking at our present situation, I think Socialism's “utopia” and Capitalism's “utopia” are not so far apart. It appears that the world economy is running into serious problems, and the United States may even become a socialist country. A cover story in The Economist suggested that now that American banks have been nationalized everyone is a socialist. However this is not a solution to the larger crisis, because modernization as the dominant model of social development remains unchallenged.

Jerome Sans: You used the structural elements of a ship's interior for your visual language in this most ambitious project of yours. The show entailed you invoking your entire repertoire at once, with your drawings, calligraphy, sculpture and installation. Does this represent a new direction for your work now?

Qiu Zhijie: An exhibition space on this scale is usually reserved for group exhibitions. Actually there are very few exhibition spaces like this in the world. I insisted on a solo exhibition because this format was necessary for me to be able to execute such an interdisciplinary work using so many media. Since the dividing line separating each artwork is ambiguous, I have been able to make many “non-artworks” for this exhibition. At this time in my artistic trajectory, these non-artworks must surface, but they do not require individual labels. It is a very good experiment for me to make a large exhibition in which twenty artworks could be viewed as one.

Jerome Sans: Why do you use a ship as the dominant icon in this piece? Is it a reference to the Titanic?

Qiu Zhijie: Human beings always have fantasies about creating great things. During industrialization people began to rationally organize society in order to release individuals' potential. We began to gather the masses together into cities and build giant skyscrapers of unprecedented size, as well as works of engineering such as the Titanic, and the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. The lofty aspirations implied in the construction of such monumental structures often leads humans to places that are beyond their control. By using the form of a “ship” for this project, the semantic meaning should be very clear—this is a parable about modernization.

Jerome Sans: But it is a ship that is a rusted old vessel from another time, not a clean, new ship.

Qiu Zhijie: Actually the image of this ship came from an impression I had during my visit to the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai. The Jiangnan Shipyard was a starting point in China's industrialization process, built on the original site of the Jiangnan Arsenal and the brainchild of Li Hongzhang. Now the shipyard is abandoned and overgrown with weeds. Some anchors and tools remain scattered on the shipyard dock. In this exhibition space a ship is gradually sinking and so the ship is already rusty.

Jerome Sans: There is an ongoing concern in your work about history, the history of the bridge, the history of the ship—let's talk about this need to always look back at history.

Qiu Zhijie: Revolutionists and revolutionary leaders tend to point to a place far away, telling people “Let us speed towards our target as quickly as possible.” People follow this assigned path. The lie is continually proclaimed: “This is our goal, it is the only possibility.” History becomes a tunnel, and there is only one exit. Those who fail to follow miss the exit and they are destroyed. The leader tells us: “The course of history is set, those who submit to that agenda will prosper, and those who resist are doomed to perish.”

It is this conception of history that we carry with us as we confront and imagine the future. As we sprint towards a target in the distance, we forget we are surrounded by possibilities. Our minds are filled with imaginings about the future, and our tunnel vision keeps us preoccupied with the task of reaching that exit straight ahead. But it is possible that this tunnel is actually a “pan flute” and its walls are lined with openings that we do not see clearly.

If we walk backwards, however, our view of the world recedes as our body moves forward. Lu Jie and I did a performance in Germany that was related to this idea. We got a group of people to participate in our event. We discussed ideas of what is avant-garde, and then everyone went out on the streets and walked backward. These people started to jaywalk, which was noteworthy because Germans usually follow the rules and they would never cross the street against a red light. Finally, an angry old German man chastised us: “In Germany, you can only walk straight ahead, not backward!” Through this experience, I learned that as a person walks backward his body becomes very sensitive, because he cannot see what awaits him. He is fascinated by the scenes he passes, and uses them as immediate points of reference. In this way, passing is actually felt, not merely imagined.

The things we see as we walk forward are unreal. We actually forget the presence of the body and suppress our senses. As a person walks backwards his sensitivity is activated and mobilized. He will continue to assess the next step based on his movement in relationship with his environment. The body is most susceptible and open in the moment that it embraces flexibility.

Jerome Sans: It is very difficult to escape from this exhibition. It is very complicated to see everything in a row. In most exhibitions you can see all details in one glance. We cannot find those points of exit that you mentioned, because there are hundreds, thousands of visual combinations, and varying modes of combination.

Qiu Zhijie: Right. That's because this exhibition raises questions about industrialization. The industrial model we see follows a blueprint and modernity is constructed. In this exhibition, there is one mode offered for thinking and another mode for making comparisons. Compare the slow growth of plants and the way plants can be out of the scope of our control. You can say it is a kind of architecture of some sort, but the columns in this building are breathing like trees. They will branch off. They will slowly take the shape of a forest.

Jerome Sans: You take a bit of the urbanist's approach to Beijing—you cannot control the city. It rapidly spreads itself out in every direction.

Qiu Zhijie: Right. Actually, this growth is impossible to really plan. An urban planner is an individual who has already been defeated in the face of his project to impose order on the expansion of the city.

Jerome Sans: There is a lot in the exhibition on that focuses on death; dead water buffalos and dead birds suspended in these clouds that are made of industrial materials, death attending the construction of railways, the history of modernity, animals and nature versus modernity and industrialism.

Qiu Zhijie: This is what I had in mind regarding the water buffalo in the show. When a railway passes through our fields, those fields harden and become the foundation of the tracks. This steel monster screaming past them, belching white smoke, frightens the water buffalo. Animals and plants, in fact, share the same efficacy; when the field is under attack, both animals and plants are part of the force of nature. These species are very patient as they serve human beings, but in the end, they will stage a comeback.

On another level, steel and metal are industrial objects. They are alive as well, but in comparison to plants and animals, the process of their deaths is slower by thousands of years. Industrial objects also live and die. They are extracted from minerals to become part of a bridge or a ship's metal form. But these metals will slowly oxidize. A decomposition process eventually takes over and they become ore again through oxidization, hence “rusting” is very important. This metal rusts, it begins to deteriorate and decompose, and finally it crumbles.

Jerome Sans: Would you say that you are taking an ecological approach in your work? I am thinking of the bamboo series where all of a sudden the bamboo grows by itself, the objects made by the hands of man simultaneously grow from bamboo and then return back to bamboo. In some ways this seems like an ecological land proposal.

Qiu Zhijie: Of course it is related to ecology. About five years ago, I began to re-read the theory of evolution. At the time I was visiting England and I felt very lonely and I thought about Thomas Henry Huxley. In Evolution and Ethics , he wrote “It may be safely assumed that, two thousand years ago, before Caesar set foot in southern Britain, the whole country-side visible from the windows of the room in which I write, was in what is called ‘the state of nature'.” The Chinese translation of Huxley's text is a masterpiece, completed by Yan Fu who comes from the same province as me. When you think about evolution, the struggle between species to survive is the most powerful piece of drama. You are quite right to bring up the environment. From an ecological perspective, what we see is the tragedy for every form of life. The competition to survive among species is a spectacular event in which the drama of their struggles becomes part of the evolutionary process.

Jerome Sans: But there is a need for such considerations as well—especially nowadays in Beijing, one of the most polluted cities in the world. Would you say that there is a desperate need to go to eco-land, or have an ecologically sustainable relationship with the land?

Qiu Zhijie: This is a very important issue. Why is the world condemning China? Yesterday I was in Xiamen and a reporter asked me: “What does ‘Made-in-China' symbolize?” I replied, saying that “Made-in-China is not a contribution to the world at large. When a producer no longer wishes to produce socks, for example, China steps in and picks up the order. China has made huge profits by using the world's resources and in the process, generates a lot of pollution. Made-in-China does not exist if China fails to invent a new production model that can be set apart from other production modes; otherwise it is only Made-by-China.” Of course it would be great if Americans use a new technology that does not involve petroleum, but that would be impossible [laughs]. The world wants to see Chinese people become environmentalists, and urge Chinese people to stop driving cars before the world runs out of oil. In fact, everyone condemns China because they are nervous about China's massive population. If every Chinese person drove a car, like the Americans, it really would be the end.

We need to look inward at ourselves. Because there are so many Chinese people, it is our responsibility to invent new models of living for humanity.

Jerome Sans: There seems to be a kind of romantic presence in your show, such as the crying mirror, and some nostalgic references to romanticism. Do you agree with this?

Qiu Zhijie: Of course there is such an element. This is where I think Chinese people have really contributed to the world. French people came up with the approach “I think therefore I am”; British people came up with the approach “assume everyone is a scoundrel” and since everyone is immoral strict laws must be put in place and enforced. These are various ways that different cultures build up human knowledge.

Chinese people have contributed their sensibility on death. I actually do not think it has to do with the occult of the Book of Changes , The Eight Trigrams , and The Supreme Ultimate. Being alive, we are aware of the inevitability of death, therefore we place great significance on filial piety, family, and even our obsession with food is related to this way of thinking. Life is as transient as a fleeting cloud; life is but a dream, indeed thinking this way is part of our experiences. The most important Chinese works of literature are devoted to these subject matters. For example A Dream of Red Mansion describes things fading away, how everything grand and thriving eventually perishes. It seems Chinese people are very extremely sensitive to this sense of impermanence.

Jerome Sans: That's a bit like what I was saying about nostalgia and romanticism; you want to somehow preserve the patrimony of a past that is rapidly disappearing.

Qiu Zhijie: We are responsible for showing how Chinese people relate to this kind of profound experience, and we have to use the materials around us to translate our experiences for the benefit of the world.

I am very pleased by that many foreigners are moved by this exhibition. The look in their eyes reveals they truly appreciate the work. I am really glad that we have moved beyond cultural barriers.

Jerome Sans: I would say that they are both moved and lost, just like children entering into a world they do not understand. It is brand new, so they are both fascinated and bewildered by it at the same time.

Qiu Zhijie: That's great. I think an exhibition space can offer us a chance to experience art in the way a newborn experiences the complexity and surprises of the human world. There is a sense in which my exhibition actually relates to Rilke's Duino Elegies . This is how an artist comes to understand the language of God's creation. Artworks should strive for perfection in order to live up to the language of God's creation, and further use this language to help God accomplish unfulfilled tasks. God's perfection is attained through our individual fulfillment.

Jerome Sans: This exhibition ends with a kind of monument. Your romanticism has its limits as well. Your work in a suicide prevention association has implications for real life and is not just conceptual, but also practical.

Qiu Zhijie: Anyone with a sense of moral obligation cannot help but try to intervene, try to do more than a detached social observer. Some people would die over financial troubles. If you had the money to help you would want to give it to them. Actually, I don't believe that people themselves choose to commit suicide; rather, they are driven to death—murdered even—by our mainstream values. In this sense, only art can offer a genuine critique of our socially accepted values and offer new ideals. Only art can help us envision possibilities that lie outside of mainstream values.

During the planning stage, I had to resolve my own artistic ambiguity regarding the tension that lies somewhere between making art and fulfilling social obligations or following moral impulses. We must locate a point so these two types of impulses can meet, in order to bridge what I called the “contradictions of freedom”, which is a conflict between social concern and individual freedom. I resolve this kind of contradiction and consider works that can balance these issues to be “total art”. The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Project is a case study of what I call “total art”.

Every visitor to the bridge, whether they are driving on the bridge or using the bridge as a place to commit suicide, or standing in the exhibition space at UCCA, including you and me, is just here for a visit.

The monument is dedicated to people who committed suicide and to visitors who journey through the exhibition. They may walk through the exhibition space in half an hour or so, or spend eighty years traveling through life. The monument is for everyone.

Jerome Sans: This is why you are thinking of creating a project in Beijing involving the land, at museums and art galleries, and taking urban programs into nature—outside where people can have unique experiences through your project.

Qiu Zhijie: Yes. This project will continue to take place outside of the Beijing art district. Recently I have been studying plants, including taking my students and spending the past two weeks in Huangshan Mountain. I have done various projects in Tibet of a similar nature. I believe these projects must bridge art and real social events so I can continue making art and finding my own social worth.

Sometimes artists present “undigested reality”—they oversimplify the use of social resources, and the social relevance of their work often lacks breakthrough value. Another mode of creating art takes you to the other extreme and it is easy to become excessively indecisive in your exhibition space. Therefore a good exhibition space is one that helps you connect with the things happing outside the exhibition, and integrate your life activities with your art.

Jerome Sans: So how would you describe this current project?

Qiu Zhijie: It is rather complicated.

Jerome Sans: Give us your two-sentence version.

Qiu Zhijie: One, as a solo project, this is an attempt by an individual to understand his own past and present. Two, the project takes the form of a retrospective that examines things neglected along the path of modernization. It is a comprehensive examination of the survival of human ideals.

Jerome Sans: So what are these ideals? What is ideal for you?

Qiu Zhijie: To walk backward.

Finally, this exhibition is my gift to my daughter Qiu Jiawa. So my third sentence goes like this: My ideals are the very things I try to protect, and I shall strive to uphold these values for my daughter's happiness.